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Public support for climate policies – from heat pumps, to home insulation, to electric vehicles – has always been about a lot more than just having access to the right facts.
Someone might like the sound of an EV, but not (yet) be able to afford it. Plenty of people have heard scare stories about heat pumps (although the views of people who actually know someone who has had one installed, tend to be more positive).
But a number of recent polls – from ECIU and Climate Barometer’s tracker – shine a light on the importance of building familiarity with EVs, because misconceptions abound.
For example, ECIU polling found that more than 5 in 10 (54%) petrol car drivers think EV drivers run out of charge at least once a year but, in reality, more than 8 in 10 (82%) of EV drivers report never running out of charge.
This is a significant misperception sitting behind the ‘range anxiety’ sometimes cited as a reason not to switch to an EV.
Climate Barometer polling tested a range of ‘anti-net zero’ narratives and soundbites, and found very few of them currently have any cut through with the public. But there was one exception: 40% of people say they don’t think EVs are more environmentally friendly than cars (when in fact they are).
And this wasn’t the only misconception about EVs.
When people were reminded that only new vehicles (not second hand ones) will be phased out after 2030, there was a 9% increase in people saying that the phase out would not affect them at all.
Support for the phasing out of petrol and diesel cars was higher (+5%), and opposition is lower (-6%) when people were reminded that it is only new vehicle sales which must be zero emissions by 2030 (39% support, 38% oppose), compared to support without the prompt about second-hand vehicles (34% support, 44% oppose).
This is a statistically significant difference.
What’s in a name? The question of what the best – most persuasive, or least polarising – term for climate change is, has a long history.
On the one hand, small tweaks to individual words or short phrases are unlikely to be driving big differences in perceptions one way or another. People’s values, worldviews, political ideology and increasingly the perceived fairness of different climate policies, are what drives public engagement.
But whether its the editorial choices made by leading international newspapers, to the framing of campaigns that drive media coverage of climate activism, linguistic choices do carry some weight. Previous research has argued that some terms (e.g. ‘global warming’) are more emotive; campaigners have criticised ‘climate change’ as a term for lacking urgency.
In a new open-access paper, researchers tested a wide range of different terms, including ‘climate change’, ‘global warming’, ‘climate crisis’, climate emergency’ and ‘climate justice’, in a survey of over 5000 US residents and concluded:
Overall, “climate change” and “global warming” were rated as most familiar and most concerning, and “climate justice” the least, with ratings for “climate crisis” and “climate emergency” falling in between.
Moreover, we find no evidence for “climate crisis” or “climate emergency” eliciting more perceived urgency than “climate change” or “global warming.”
We therefore recommend sticking with familiar terms, conclude that changing terminology is likely not the key solution for promoting climate action, and suggest alternative communication strategies.
The ‘alternative communication strategies’ might include identifying tangible ways in which audiences with different moral and political values could benefit from specific climate policies, or ensuring communities impacted by new energy infrastructure, or changes to urban travel systems, feel adequately consulted.
Confirming previous research around the general lack of familiarity with the term ‘climate justice’, the paper also noted that willingness to support climate-friendly policies and eat less red meat were lowest for ‘climate justice’ (which was the least familiar term tested).
This isn’t an argument for downplaying the importance of the issues the term refers to, which are central to both international climate governance and the implementation of specific in-country policies. But it does underscore the lack of recognition of the phrase among many public audiences, a finding which has also been observed in UK research.
The Conservative Party suffered their ‘worst ever’ result at the 2024 General Election. As well as general dissatisfaction with the Conservative government, polls consistently showed that worries about the cost of living, the condition of the NHS (and for some, immigration) were the biggest influences on how people voted.
Climate change – and more broadly environmental problems like air pollution and sewage in rivers – were also cited by voters when asked to select their top three most important issues going into the election. But was climate change a ‘vote winner’ at the election?
Echoing previous research showing an appetite for greater leadership on climate change, a large (20,000 people) survey by Focal Data on behalf of Persuasion and ECIU found that 53% of voters who had switched their vote from Conservatives to Labour (or the Liberal Democrats) believed that Government policy on climate change should be going further and faster that it has been (27% thought it should be going more slowly).
And polling by More in Common on behalf of E3G went even further, showing that Rishi Sunak’s decision (in September 2023) to slow down some of the country’s net zero policy timelines had a negative impact on voters. People were twice as likely to say that delaying net zero targets was one of Sunak’s biggest mistakes, than his biggest achievements.
Whilst the General Election was not fought on climate and net zero grounds (compared with the last General Election in 2019, there were roughly 50% fewer mentions of ‘climate’ in the British media election coverage), these findings suggest that there is currently no political capital to be found in opposing green policies.
The only party standing on an anti-net zero ticket were Reform UK – but the same More in Common polling found that immigration was overwhelmingly the reason that people voted for this party. Only 4% selected Reform’s environmental policies as a reason for voting for them.
Surveys are clear that the British public supports the country’s net zero targets.
When surveys focus on specific policies (like low traffic neighbourhoods, for example), then a range of wider considerations come into play, and unsurprisingly, support for individual policies like this tends to be lower than support for net zero overall. Although, as Climate Barometer tracker data underscores, even this policy (presented as divisive in media commentary) has more support than opposition.
And this trend – of most net zero policies having greater support than opposition – is reflected in a new Ipsos survey.
In nationally representative polling from April 2024, just before the General Election was called, Ipsos reported that:
Support is highest for giving people more assistance to increase the energy efficiency of their homes (76%); frequent flyer levies (62%); and changing product pricing to reflect how environmentally friendly products are (56%).
The least popular policy tested (an exception to the rule of support outweighing opposition) was electric vehicle subsidies (39% support, 41% oppose).
However, while most net zero policies continue to enjoy majority support among Britons, Ipsos report that this support has fallen over the past two years:
Support for ensuring access to sustainable pension funds and increasing vegetarian/vegan options in food provisioning have both fallen by 8 points since 2022, support for creating low traffic neighbourhoods is down 7 points, and support for higher taxes on red meat and dairy products and electric vehicle subsidies are both down 6 ppts.
Labour and Lib Dem 2019 voters support all policies, while past Conservative voters only support a few: frequent flyer levies, changing product pricing, ensuring access to sustainable pensions, and enabling people to make energy efficiency improvements to their home.
The polling also suggested a softening of the intensity with which people report feeling worried about climate change (likely a reflection of the difficulty of maintaining a strong sense of worry about an issue that can’t be resolved in the short term), although Ipsos reported that overall levels of concern remained very high,
Polling in the weeks leading up the 2024 General Election by the consultancy True North was reported as showing 75% of people supporting North Sea oil & gas – this is a much higher number than would be expected from wider polling. But the wording of the questions asked people to choose between imported oil and domestic oil (not oil vs renewable energy, which is consistently preferred as the best way to reduce the country’s reliance on importing foreign oil and gas).
Polling by Uplift, carried out at a similar time, found that North Sea oil and gas companies are widely considered by most respondents (70%) to benefit more from extraction in the basin than Scotland itself does currently.
Uplift found that SNP voters were the most concerned about climate change, and that 45% of SNP voters thought the UK Government should stop issuing new oil and gas drilling licences in the North Sea, compared with 31% in favour of new licensing.
Previous research with SNP voters also found higher support than opposition for ending licenses to drill in the North sea, and at a British level there’s much more support for renewables than oil and gas. But there isn’t yet a clear majority in favour of ending oil and gas exploration altogether – in Scotland or in Britain.
Polling by Opinium for the Conservative Environment Network (CEN), conducted just before the 2024 General Election was announced, suggests that playing into Reform UK’s anti-net zero stance will not be a vote winner for the Conservative party.
One important finding is that although Reform UK is (uniquely among the other mainstream parties) campaigning on an anti-net zero ticket, climate change is not currently a salient issue for Reform voters. The CEN polling found that only 2% of Reform voters listed climate change/net zero/environment as their primary concern (the majority chose immigration as their primary concern).
This mirrors polling carried out across multiple European countries, ahead of the EU election which saw significant gains for far-right parties. In Europe, as in the UK, the rise in support for right wing parties does not appear to be driven by these parties’ policies on climate change (even if they tend to hold anti-net zero positions).
The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) commissioned survey data in support of a linked call for the UK to ‘reimagine’ its net zero targets. The survey (of 15,000 people) was conducted across seven European member states, as well as the UK.
Many of the findings support well-established patterns of climate change/net zero perceptions among the UK public, including:
Focusing on the lack of belief in the feasibility of net zero goals based on current government programmes (what they call the ‘delivery deficit’), the TBI argues that the UK’s net zero targets should be relaxed, on the grounds that they are out of step with public opinion, and have been made without paying sufficient attention to public concerns on cost and affordability.
The latter point is important: net zero policies will indeed be difficult to achieve without broad based public support.
But wider research is clear that across the political spectrum, people want to see more leadership on climate, not less. The ‘delivery deficit’ that the TBI identifies could just as easily be used as an argument to bring the public in, and go faster on net zero.
A number of recent polls have suggested that younger generations – including teenagers – are showing some signs of climate fatigue.
New data collected across 33 countries by Ipsos and published on Earth Day found evidence of what they describe as rising apathy and fatalism among the young (especially men):
Millennial and Generation Z men feel more apathetic and fatalistic about climate change compared with older generations and with women. Three in ten say it’s already “too late” to tackle climate change. Similar proportions of young males agree there’s no point changing their own behaviour to tackle climate
change because it won’t make any difference anyway (Gen Z men, 32%; Millennial men 31%) .
Ipsos report considerable variation across different countries – a full 67% of Indian respondents felt it was already too late to do anything about climate change, whereas most in most other countries the level of agreement with this sentiment was between 20-30%.
But the age-based differences are clear across the large, international sample as a whole, and in the UK
And they underscore the importance of communication and engagement strategies that (whilst not shying away from the stark realities of climate change) do not stoke a sense of fatalism and erode any sense of agency among the public.
Climate Outreach worked with researchers from the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST) and the environmental charity Hubbub to test food and diet-related messages, with residents in Manchester who were ‘climate concerned’ but are not typically involved or represented in climate conversations (broadly representative of ‘Loyal Nationals’), testing ideas and messages about reducing meat and dairy over a 6 month period.
In surveys, only 27% of people say they have no plans to/don’t want to reduce the amount of meat they eat. But while there is potential to reduce the amount of meat and dairy in people’s diets, the research found that:
In an open access paper published in the journal Nature Communications, a large sample of the German public (more than 24,000 people) was surveyed before and just after major climate protests/civil disobedience took place.
Following what the authors describe as ‘confrontational’ protest acts, levels of reported concern about climate change rose by just over 1% (not a huge number, but a meaningful uptick nonetheless with a sample of this size and given the high level of pre-existing concern in Germany).
Interestingly, there was no sign of political polarisation either. And although the political context in Germany differs in a range of ways to the UK, the study offers direct evidence that significant protests do ‘cut through’ in terms of national public opinion. This is not always easy to demonstrate without his form of ‘before and after’ study design.
In another new open access paper on a similar topic, researchers asked US participants in an online experiment to give their views on a range of civil disobedience tactics. They concluded:
Most Americans view climate-related NVCD as appropriate if it is non-violent and targeted towards those companies or entities which are responsible for taking actions to the detriment of the climate. This could be in the form of promoting fossil fuel use, or even accepting fossil fuel financing. Conversely, actions that are violent, or targeted at entities not seen as being responsible for exacerbating climate change are seen as inappropriate targets.
Gradually, the evidence base on how contemporary protest tactics are actually landing with members of the public is building. Studies like these are important for checking assumptions about the way in which people react to protests involving civil disobedience.
Concern levels are likely to temporarily tick upwards when protests capture the media spotlight, even if the elite commentary that gets the most bandwidth is high critical of demonstrations. But the more that protests can do to focus in on ‘valid’ or ‘legitimate’ targets, the higher the chance of bringing the wider public along.
While Climate Barometer tracker data shows that overall public awareness about heat pumps is low, it seems that misinformation runs through what the public do claim to know about heat pumps.
An article from Carbon Brief summarises the top myths about heat pumps circulating among the British public and media discourse, including that 24% think running a heat pump costs more than a gas boiler, and 20% think heat pumps only work in new homes (Good Energy poll).
Policies to cut carbon can bring a range of ‘co-benefits’. From cleaner air, to warmer homes, to the prospect of green jobs, these co-benefits have often been advocated as a way to build support for net zero among people who may be more interested in these side-effects of climate policies than net zero itself.
In a new survey led by Neil Jennings at the Grantham Institute (Imperial College London), just over 1000 people were asked to assess nine different potential co-benefits of action on climate change.
The top response was ‘homes that are more affordable to heat’. This was chosen as the most important benefit for individuals, for communities, and for the country as a whole. It was also supported by voters of all parties. In the context of the eyewatering cost of energy over the past two years, cheaper heating bills were a universally popular co-benefit of action on climate change.
Another popular response was ‘improved energy security’. This makes a lot of sense, given that the rise in energy prices over the past two years was driven by a spike in the price of imported gas in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And there’s growing evidence that renewables as a route to a more secure, homegrown energy system is a popular proposition across the political spectrum.
Interestingly, there was much less support for the idea that climate policies could be drivers of job creation. The prospect of green jobs has routinely been used by campaigners and politicians alike to build support for net zero. But this survey – backed by wider research – suggests that claims about green jobs may not land as well as is assumed.
But the survey makes it clear there’s work to do to persuade the public that even the most popular co-benefits are feasible in practice, with fewer people agreeing they’re practically achievable than identifying them as desirable in the first place.
The problem here isn’t a lack of positivity towards job creation, its the level of trust in the government to deliver them. Whether its warmer homes, energy security, or new green jobs, practical and tangible examples of climate policies actually delivering the benefits people want to see play a crucial role.
Climate policies really can deliver a whole host of positives. But when it comes to persuading the public of net zero co-benefits, seeing is believing.
In a survey of 2000 people carried out by Opinium, on behalf of Positive Money, 75% of UK adults were concerned about the impact of climate change on the cost of heating or cooling their home, while 69% were worried about the impact of grocery prices, 54% on the price of housing or rent, 74% on electricity costs, 68% on the cost of water and 59% on transport costs.
These concerns about ‘climateflation’ show that the perceived impacts of climate change are not confined to changes in the weather (although these are becoming more noticeable to people too).
Climate Barometer data backs this up – concern about the impact of climate change on household bills was the third most common choice behind ‘harm to nature and wildlife’ and ‘suffering and hardship for the world’s poorest’.
Separate analysis investigating the cost of ‘not zero‘ (i.e. not pursuing net zero goals fast enough) by the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) supports people’s concerns: households really are facing higher bills because of a lack of action on climate change. Their calculations reveal that cumulative savings of £70bn on the UK’s energy bill could have been made had investments happened over past decade.
The Positive Money report emphasises that these climate-linked costs are disproportionately felt by lower income households.
In the past 6 months, both the Conservatives and Labour have reduced their green policy ambitions. First, the Conservatives announced delays to some near-term net zero targets. more recently, Labour said it would no longer be investing £28 billion per year into green projects. Across this period, polls have indicated that voters expect leadership from politicians on climate change, and want more (rather than less) action on climate.
New polling from Redfield & Wilton (in the wake of these announcements) asked voters for the two main parties to select between a number of competing statements, across a range of topics.
Conservative voters are more likely to believe that the threat of climate change is not being taken seriously (66%) than they are to believe that the threat of climate change to the UK has been overstated (34%). For Labour voters, a full 77% believe climate change is not being taken seriously enough, with only 23% seeing the risk to the UK as overstated.
In the wake of Labour’s announcement that their green investment pledge would be scaled back, the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) commissioned snap polling from Opinium.
Only 14% of people reported being ‘very aware’ of Labour’s (previously) proposed £28 billion a year investment plans. This is worth noting, as a significant amount of debate within green policy circles has focused on this specific number (but most of the public wasn’t aware of it in the first place).
Roughly double the number of people (26%) said they were ‘very aware’ of the decision to reduce the £28 billion pledge, though, suggesting that for a significant number of people, the intense media debate around whether or not Labour would ‘U-turn’ would have been the first time they had encountered the policy.
Read our analysis taking stock of what the policy shift from Labour is likely to have meant to voters here.
A new survey of nearly 130,000 people across 125 countries has found that there is widespread support for climate action around the world. But, people often don’t realise how much support there is.
The open access article, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, presents new, large-scale evidence of a global mandate for climate action, while shining a light on the pervasiveness of climate ‘perception gaps’. The headline findings across the global dataset show that:
However, this ‘actual’ support for climate action was at a mismatch with what people ‘perceived’ the levels of support to be. Around the world, people “systematically underestimate the willingness of their fellow citizens to act”.
And these discrepancies matter. If we don’t believe there’s a mandate for green policies, inertia slows the pace of the green transition. ‘Perception gaps’ like these have consequences.